Heathen mythology, Illustrated by extracts from the most celebrated writers, both ancient and modern - Various

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skies,

      His every look was peaceful, and expressed

      The softness of the lover in the beast.

      Agenor's royal daughter, as she played

      Among the fields, the milk white bull surveyed,

      And viewed his spotless body with delight,

      And at a distance kept him still in sight;

      At length she plucked the rising flowers, that fed

      The gentle beast, and fondly stroked his head.

      She placed herself upon his back, and rode

      O'er fields and meadows, seated on the God.

      He gently marched along, and by degrees,

      Left the dry meadows and approached the seas,

      Where now he dips his hoofs and wets his thighs,

      Now plunges in, and carries off the prize."

      Ovid.

      At length Juno, unable to bear the many injuries her love had sustained, left Jupiter, and retired to the Isle of Samos, announcing, at the same time, that she should return no more to the court of the King of Heaven. The latter, not disheartened, dressed a statue as Queen of Olympus, placed it in his chariot, and declared it should be the future wife of the ruler of the Gods. This induced Juno to quit her hiding place; for, unable to restrain her jealousy, she rushed back with all speed, destroyed the statue, laughingly acknowledged her error, and was reconciled to her husband.

      The wife of Jupiter is always represented as superbly arrayed, in a chariot drawn by two peacocks, where she sat with a sceptre in her hand, having always a peacock beside her. She was adored above all at Argos, where her feasts were celebrated by the sacrifice of a hundred bulls. At Rome, hers were the Lupercalian feasts. She was believed to preside over the birth-pangs of the Roman women, and the priests, to render the time fruitful, struck these grave matrons with a portion of the skin of a kid, which they asserted had formed one of the vestments of the Goddess.

      In the spirit of a high mythology, Juno may be considered as representing the sublunary atmosphere; and, as opposed to Jupiter, the active origin and organizer of all, she is of a passive nature. These ideas are allied with those of Hymen, who is called Juno, the virtuous wife.

      A statue of Juno recently discovered, is thus described:—

      "The countenance expresses a stern unquestioned severity of dominion, with a certain sadness. The lips are beautiful, susceptible of expressing scorn, but not without sweetness. With fine lips a person is never wholly bad, and they never belong to the expression of emotions purely selfish, lips being the seat of imagination. The drapery is finely conceived; and the manner in which the act of throwing back one leg is expressed in the diverging folds of the drapery of the left breast, fading in bold, yet graduated lines, into a skirt, as it descends from the left shoulder, is admirably imagined."

      Shelley.

Ceres, probably

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      Ceres, daughter of Saturn and Cybele, was goddess of the productions of the earth. She taught man the art of agriculture, and is represented crowned with wheat, holding a torch in one hand, and in the other an ear of corn; sometimes she carries a sceptre, and sometimes a sickle, and her chariot is drawn by lions or by serpents.

      ——————"As tempered suns arise

      Sweet beamed, and shedding through the lucid clouds

      A pleasing calm: while broad and brown, below

      Extensive harvests hang the heavy head.

      Rich, silent, deep, they stand: for not a gale

      Rolls its light billows o'er the bending plain:

      A calm of plenty; till the ruffled air

      Falls from its poise, and gives the breeze to blow.

      

      Rent is the fleecy mantle of the sky,

      And back by fits the shadows sweep along.

      A gaily chequered, heart-expanding view,

      Far as the circling eye can shoot around,

      Unbounded, tossing in a flood of corn."

      Thomson.

      Loved by Jupiter, she had by the God a daughter called Proserpine, whom Pluto, God of Hell, seized near the beautiful vale of Enna, in Sicily, and carried with him to his dismal kingdom. Ceres, whose love for her child, almost surpassed even the usual love of mothers, placed on Mount Etna two torches, and sought her "from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve," throughout the world. At last, when she deemed her search well nigh hopeless, she was informed by the nymph Arethusa of the dwelling place of her child, and of the name of him who had torn her beloved one from her paternal care.

      Ceres implored Jupiter to interfere, and withdraw her from the infernal regions, which he agreed to do, but found it would be beyond his power, as, by a decree of Destiny, she would not be able to quit her place of concealment, should she have partaken of any nourishment while there; and it was discovered that though she had refused all ordinary food, she had been tempted while in the gardens of Pluto, to pluck a pomegranate, and to eat a few of its seeds. This was sufficient; and the utmost Ceres could obtain, was that she should pass six months of the year with her mother and six months with Pluto, when she became his wife.

      "Near Enna's walls a spacious lake is spread,

      Famed for the sweetly singing swans it bred;

      Pergûsa is its name: and never more

      Were heard, or sweeter sounds than on Cayster's shore.

      Woods crown the lake, and Phœbus ne'er invades

      The tufted fences or offends the shades:

      Fresh fragrant breezes fan the verdant bowers,

      And the moist ground smiles with enamelled flowers,

      The cheerful birds their airy carols sing,

      And the whole year is one eternal spring.

      Here while young Proserpine, among the maids,

      Diverts herself in these delicious shades;

      While like a child with busy speed and care,

      She gathers lilies here, and violets there;

      While first to fill her little lap she strives,

      Hell's grizzly monarch at the shades arrives;

      Sees her thus sporting on the flowery green,

      And loves the blooming maid as soon as seen.

      The frighted Goddess to her mother cries:

      But all in vain, for now far off she flies;

      His urgent flame impatient of delay,

      Swift as his thought he seized the beauteous prey,

      And bore her in his sooty car away.

      Far she behind her leaves her virgin train;

      To them too cries, and cries to them in vain.

      And while

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